Road Warrior: Route 4 rates low on the pothole fix list

Potholes riddle the parking lot of Westfield Garden State Plaza close to Route 4 in Paramus.

Drive a mile or so east on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Paterson, and you're treated to a surprisingly smooth winter ride.

Despite curbside piles of snow and incessant traffic lights, this old, two-lane city thoroughfare — also called Broadway — contains relatively few potholes. This silky condition continues as the road becomes Route 4, a state highway through Elmwood Park and Fair Lawn, until silk turns to gravel with a series of disappointing bumps and thuds near the Paramus malls.

Craters have even cropped up at some of the entrances to the malls and their parking lots. Fear of these black holes, on the roads or in parking lots, was enough to make Teaneck's Paula Rogovin skip a concert in Fair Lawn last week even though her favorite group was performing. Some, like Mary Beaven, now treat all of Route 4 like a winter pariah.

"I avoid it as much as possible," the Teaneck motorist said.

And Jeffrey Alecci wants the state to pay for the broken tire he blames on a big Route 4 crater.

"When will they fix it?" the Wyckoff motorist asked.

But no one is more disappointed than Richard Barbieri.

"I realize conditions aren't great right now," the Paramus mayor said, "but you would think red flags would have started appearing on somebody's radar by now when one of the state's most-traveled retail highways wasn't getting the treatment it deserves."

Rebuilt in 1999, the Route 4 crossing and flyover at Route 17 near the Garden State Parkway attracts more than 300,000 vehicles daily, enough to make Paramus one of the nation's leading shopping destinations. Studies consistently show that Paramus retailers represent nearly $5 billion in annual sales, marketing experts say.

But the New Jersey Department of Transportation offers no apology. Its crews have filled 1,100 potholes along the 11-mile roadway — 700 of them in the last week, said agency spokesman Stephen Schapiro.

The DOT relies to some extent on complaints lodged on its 1-800-POTHOLE call-in line and the njcommuter.com website, but priorities are "based on location, number and size of the pothole," he explained. "Major highways with higher speed limits take priority over lesser-used roads."

At 50 mph — sometimes slower — Route 4 doesn't rank with interstates such as Routes 80, 95 and 287, although its volume through Paramus ranks high. "The department is constantly evaluating and reevaluating roads," Schapiro added. And on- and off-ramps get lower priorities, "because speeds are generally lower," meaning the chances of potholes causing damage or injury on these ramps are less, he said.

That explains why ramps to and from Paramus and Spring Valley roads near the Paramus malls and nearly every entrance and exit on the highway in Teaneck and Englewood are riddled with holes.

"The problem is that we're swamped with work, because this is one of the worst winters in history," Schapiro said, adding that road maintenance this winter has doubled last winter's workload. "But we're determined to make all necessary repairs."

How did Broadway in Paterson, Elmwood Park and Fair Lawn escape serious road damage this winter?

The road through Paterson, Mayor Jeffery Jones said, was repaved recently and typically does not endure the high-speed traffic found on Route 4 several miles to the east. The same applies to the highway through Fair Lawn and Elmwood Park, where cars must frequently slow down for traffic lights.

But speed and volume are only some of the factors that produce chronic potholes. In a Northeastern state built largely on soil with a highly porous silt content, roads must be built with deep, solid foundations beneath the asphalt covering, and they must be well-maintained to prevent water from weakening the road bed, said John Schuring, a civil engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"In time, the freeze-thaw cycle will produce cracks," Schuring said. "So it's important to seal them, generally with hot liquid asphalt." Budgetary constraints, however, sometimes limit the maintenance that counties and municipalities can devote to infrastructure, he added.

Many local roads, including some surrounding the Paramus malls, such as Spring Valley Road and Spring Valley Avenue, are county arteries with deep potholes. But citing manpower limitations, Bergen County Public Works Director Joseph Crifasi noted that some communities had agreed to fill their own holes if the county provided the materials.

"It's a cooperative effort," he said. "We all have limitations."

Owing to its larger size, the county government has substantial equipment and a vast budget. Pothole-filling eats up about 10 percent of the $20 million the county allocates for public works operations, Crifasi said.